On the Move: From expat to repat, workers face culture shock, challenges

By Michelle Sandlin |
April 4, 2014

Bethany Swartwood, a senior manager for Deloitte Tax LLP, knows first hand about the challenges of living as an expat in the U.K., and then returning to the U.S.

Companies with a mobile workforce place significant focus on supporting their employees and their spouse or family when they go on overseas assignments, but they often neglect to provide equal support when they bring them back. As such, these employees and families often struggle with repatriation issues upon their return.

Bethany Swartwood, a senior manager for Deloitte Tax LLP, knows first hand about the challenges of living as an expat in the U.K., and then returning to the U.S. She spent eight years living, studying, and working in London. While moving to London had its share of challenges, Swartwood said that moving back to the U.S. proved to be even more challenging.

Having grown up in North Carolina, Swartwood said that the most obvious culture shock she experienced when moving to London was leaving a Southern suburban area to live in a major metropolitan city.

Swartwood worked for Deloitte in London, where she was involved in a mix of mobility programs for corporate clients. She then moved into international high net worth.

After 7½ years in London, Swartwood began thinking about moving back to the U.S.

"I got sick of being broke all the time. The biggest challenge to being in the U.K. was just trying to adjust my own expectations of finances and lifestyle. It was great that everything was so accessible, but it can be a hard city to live in, because the cost of living is so high. Also, I was looking at my own career and long-term career planning," she said.

When asked where she wanted to go, Swartwood said Houston was the obvious hotspot, so she moved to Houston in January 2012. The culture shock this time wasn't just personal, it was also professional.

Swartwood said that she went from a client base of law firms, private equity funds, and investment banks, to focusing primarily on oil and gas clients.

Although Swartwood had been gearing herself up professionally for the expected changes, she said that she wasn't fully prepared personally.

The first shock came a month before Swartwood left the U.K. She picked out a car to purchase, but when she went to the dealership and they ran her credit, she was told that it appeared as if she had not existed for the past eight years.

"There were just a lot of pragmatic things that you discover as you're starting your career, but I had done it all in another country. People aren't as sympathetic to you when you're a professional and you've been working for quite some time and you don't quite know how things work as opposed to when you're a student," she said.

Houston was also very different from North Carolina, and certainly different from London.

"In my naiveté, I thought that I'm Southern and they're Southern, so how different could they be?" she said.

Professionally Swartwood said that she felt well prepared for the change, and that doing the same type of work helped.

"I would have done a little bit better job of preparing myself personally and just thinking it's OK to be homesick. I would get homesick for London and I would question my decision. I would think there was something wrong with me," she said. "I also would have been a little better about maintaining my routine to some extent. You still have to go to the gym four or five times a week. I had the professional continuity, so I think if I had maintained some of the personal continuity, that the transition would have been a little bit easier."

According to Swartwood, the typical expat profile is changing, and that they don't always have an accompanying spouse or family. She said that there are also rotators who are effectively repatriating every 28 days. There are also single women and single men who go on assignments and often come back as a dual-career couple.

"I would say that repatriation effectively starts the day you leave. It's not necessarily that you go out there and then six months before your assignment is due to end, you ask for a lifeline. I think it's important to truly think of it as a lifecycle," she said.

Companies also need to focus on repatriation because of the negative impact it can have on employee retention, and fear of losing key personnel at the end of the assignment.

"The person you send out is not the person you're going to bring back home, and that's the whole point of the assignment. Keep in mind that people have different needs on the way back in than they do on the way out," Swartwood said.

Michelle Sandlin is a writer who has been involved in the relocation industry for many years. She is the 2014 president of Houston Relocation Professionals (HRP), and vice president/director of communications and marketing for Chicago Title. Follow Michelle on Facebook: www.facebook.com/HoustonRelocation and on Twitter: @MichelleSandlin. Also visit "On the Move - Exploring Houston Relocation with Michelle Sandlin" at blog.chron.com/onthemove.

If you have something to share or contribute, please send an email to michelle.sandlin@me.com. Please look for another Michelle Sandlin "On the Move" relocation article in today's Homes section.